This attractive mushroom has a cinnabar cap that is covered with mealy granules, and a stem that is distinctively sheathed. It is a saprobe under conifers, helping to decompose needle duff and forest debris. The color of the cap and the habitat under conifers, together with its fairly large size, will separate Cystoderma cinnabarinum from many other species of Cystoderma--but microscopic analysis (details below) may be required to separate it from a handful of potentially similar species.

Description:

Ecology: Saprobic; growing alone, gregariously, or in loose clusters under conifers and occasionally under hardwoods (sometimes fruiting from well rotted wood); summer and fall; widely distributed in North America.

Gills: Attached to the stem but pulling away from it by maturity; close or crowded; white; at first covered by the partial veil.

Stem: 3-6 cm long; up to 1.5 cm thick; more or less club-shaped; dry; smooth and whitish to pale cinnamon near the apex, but sheathed with cinnabar granular scales from the base upwards, the sheath terminating in a flimsy ring zone; the granules often wearing away as the mushroom matures, exposing a coarse, whitish surface below.

Cystoderma terreii (variously spelled terreyi and terrei) is a synonym, and should probably be the "correct" name for Cystoderma cinnabarinum, since it is the older name.

The mushrooms in the fourth photo were identified for the photographer by a Canadian mycologist as Cystoderma granulosum. I have assigned them to Cystoderma cinnabarinum on the basis of the indicated size, the orange colors, and the conifer duff present on the stem bases--but I have not examined the specimens microscopically.